Spreadsheet – Breaking Change in v19.2

In the upcoming release of .NET Standard 2.1, Microsoft is going to introduce a new Range structure in the System namespace.

All well and good, but since our Spreadsheet API already contains the DevExpress.Spreadsheet.Range interface, you will get the following error when compiling your spreadsheet application under .NET Standard 2.1:

error CS0104: 'Range' is an ambiguous reference between 'DevExpress.Spreadsheet.Range' and 'System.Range'

Now the obvious workaround fix is to use the following code

using Range = DevExpress.Spreadsheet.Range;

but that's not going to help new customers or even you when writing new applications. Hence, in order to fix this issue properly, we've decided to rename our DevExpress.Spreadsheet.Range interface to DevExpress.Spreadsheet.CellRange in the next major release, v19.2. This change will affect all DevExpress Spreadsheet products:

@Hedi: Because we hate having breaking changes in minor releases. They are universally bad news: customers assume (as would I, to be honest) that they can update a minor release and recompile with no after effects.

Cheers, Julian

21 June, 2019

Stephen J White

Thanks for taking care of this, I've run into similar problems with other libraries where they have name conflicts with classes that are native to the framework. It's not fun. :)

26 June, 2019

|Alex|

Thanks a lot for bringing this to our attention Julian

9 July, 2019

Riyas Kari

Thanks

28 July, 2019

Technology One

Hi

We're researching to upgrade our .Net windows controls/forms projects to the latest version of .NET Framework (let's say .Net 4.7) and as a result of that, we need to upgrade the referenced DevExpress components to a newer version which is compatible with the .NET version.

Our projects currently use DevExpress components version 10.1.6.0 with .NET 3.5. Our usages of DevExpress include XtraGrid, XtraEditors, XtraLayout, Microsoft Office interface components and several more.

The question is what would it take to achieve that? we understand that's a huge breaking change.

We are looking for advises, guideline and steps to proceed.

Thanks for your help.

Tuong Nguyen

1 September, 2019

Julian Bucknall (DevExpress)

Tuong: Your best bet, without a doubt, would be to contact our support team. They will totally be able to help you find the best way to explore and understand what you'd need to do.